Paolo Gallo, Senior Advisor to the Chairman of the World Economic Forum in Geneva, summarised the following strongest trends in the current labour market.
1. Self-employment
Most jobs that are being created today in developed economies do not offer permanent employment contracts, but different forms of self-employment. Employers do not provide either social and health insurance or paid leave, or indeed other forms of security and protection to these workers.
2. Longer life
The average life expectancy has increased by approximately two years for every past decade. In Japan, Italy and Germany, it has currently reached 90 years of age for women and 80 for men. However, this increasing life expectancy raises the question of how to secure pensions for people who will be retired for more than 20 or even 30 years. Another issue is lifelong education of employees.
3. New professions
Modern technologies create jobs, over half of which are brand new. These include, for example, experts in artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, machine learning, autonomous vehicles, etc. While wages for these experts are rising, traditional professions are being rewarded less and less.
4. Stronger roles for women
Although women today make up the majority of the world's population, they work for lower wages and in roles that do not match their levels of expertise. However, the future of the forthcoming 4th Industrial Revolution requires precisely such women's characteristics as the ability to cooperate or listen, along with empathy and creativity.
Paolo Gallo points out that we can no longer build the same organisations as during the 1st Industrial Revolution when employees were considered easy to replace. Gallo also argues that the persisting bureaucracy in the public sector can't work either. People need to be given more power, and companies should say goodbye to a style of management involving rewards and punishments. Knowledge workers draw motivation from the purpose of their work, the autonomy to perform it, plus the possibility further to improve themselves and work under fair conditions.
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